My usual schedule of decorating our home for Christmas over the long Thanksgiving weekend was pushed back a week after spending it with my husband’s family.  I realized as we prepared to head South, that this was the first year in nearly a decade that I wasn’t cooking a large portion of the food (my Mom & I usually divide it up…you may remember my Thanksgiving posts from last year?).  I had a very relaxed, non-stressful Thanksgiving meal (unfortunately I can’t say the same for my Mother-in-law, but we all helped ease the stress as much as possible).

On to the topic at hand…Christmas decorating is in full swing, I started pulling out the boxes on Thursday…just a couple of hours before my darling husband called to ask if I could handle him inviting his boss (from Washington state) over for dinner…he called around 4:30…I was a physical mess, the house was a mess, dinner was not even in my brain yet (I was planning on leftover spaghetti).  I had just about 2 hours to get everything pulled together…this is not the sort of dinner you want to be anything short of spectacular.  It was a success, and only slightly stressful LOL.  Another day that the decorating didn’t get underway. 

So, Friday before the Stinky Boys arrived on the school bus, I got to work on the idea I had in my head for our front door.  I usually have a wreath, with lights & a big sparkly red bow…I wanted something different this year.  I went by Lowe’s and asked for some Christmas tree scraps…those are free, if you didn’t know.  I got plenty to choose from…I looked for plump sprigs of Frazier fir.  My idea was for a pretty, natural door spray.  I also trimmed some long pieces from our 2 big boxwood bushes (they needed some trimming anyway).  My ‘secret’ ingredient was going to be some fresh rosemary from my garden.

Aren’t they fresh and beautiful?  I considered a few options for bundling all of these together…wire, twine…then I decided on the easiest:  zip ties!  Darling husband has a ginormous cannister…even has green ones!

So I started grouping them together, starting with the Frazier fir.  I took the bunch over to my door, trimmed a few pieces back and this is what I ended up with…

You can barely see the zip tie!  Be sure that you have a couple of branches above the zip tie, to keep it from sliding down.  Next, I grouped the boxwood and rosemary together.  I wanted to have a few sprigs of boxwood at the top of the spray to cover the raw ends of the rest (my pic is upside down).

Then I zip tied the two bunches together…and added in some faux red berries.  Once the two sets of greens were zipped together, I slid the berry sprigs in and folded the wire ends down in the back to keep them in place.  I wanted to hang it by my red velvet ribbon, so I made a collar that I stapled in the back to cover up where all of them are tied together.  I had darling husband staple gun the long pieces I hung it from into the top of our door.  Voila!  What do you think???

It smells heavenly!  Traditionally I hang a live wreath over our fireplace (we have an artificial tree, so I do this for the smell…I can’t give up the convenience of the pre-lit tree!).  I bought the most basic, but largest wreath at Lowe’s…it was $15.  I had some leftover boxwood and berries, so I decided to dress it up, too (you could also say I went boxwood crazy).  I love the layers of texture!  Here is the before of the wreath…

…and the after…

I just shoved the boxwood & berries between the layers of Frazier fir…it was way too easy & cheaper than buying the fancier wreaths (not to mention I like mine more than what was available!).

Today’s secret revealed…I kept chanting “keep calm & carry on” when I was in the mad dash for our impromptu dinner party.  The kids were an amazing help getting all of their stuff picked up.  Fortunately, during one of my long phone conversations that morning, I had dusted…don’t ask me why LOL :)!

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